However, I believe it’s entirely possible for Christians to understand with “head knowledge” their salvation in Christ, and yet never experience it spiritually … while they are still saved … they’ve been blinded by the legalism and pseudo-Christianity of today’s churches to really walk in that life.

Love,
Caleb

Heck, maybe the “struggle” you’re having with sin isn’t really even a “sin” at all … which leads me to:

@ Paul: “cumming” funny

But seriously, what’s wrong with Porn or masturbation?

In Love,
Caleb

Respectfully, I think it is important for your readers to know that prior to the turn of this century the view you espouse of the Christian life was not the orthodox teaching of the Church. This view began in the teachings of C. I. Scofield and Lewis Sperry Chafer and was a radical departure at that time from orthodoxy. The teaching that we must yield or surrender to the Spirit so God can work through us was the error of the “two nature” theory (i.e., the teaching that says the “I” [our sin nature] must get out of the way so that God can work through us [the spirit or new man], leaving us, as it were, unchanged.) What then is being conformed to the image of God? (2 Cor. 3:18) Paul says, “Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” (2 Cor. 4:16). 1 John 3:3 says, “and everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, [not yields himself] just as He is pure.” “for it is God who works in you, [not through you] both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). The believer practices righteousness because His seed remains in him (1 John 3:9, 10), not because His seed is working through him. The fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of His work in us. It is not that which the Spirit does through us, but rather that which we ourselves bear as a result of His gracious work within us. Therefore, although we are bearing the fruit, it is God alone who receives the glory. In 1 John 3:22 it states, “And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight”. This verse does not suggest that it is God keeping the commandments through us but rather it is us keeping the commandments through Him (i.e., by His grace). God does not save us and then wait for us to someday yield to Him so He can work through us, using us like robots, but rather He is constantly working in us, renewing us, sanctifying us, and conforming us to the glorious image of His dear Son. One of the great promises and incentives of the Christian life is that we are truly being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

I am not aware of one verse in Scripture that states that God performs acts of righteousness through us, or that Christ lives the Christian life for us, but rather it is always us working through Him. Indeed, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13-14).

When the Apostle John makes the statement, “he who is born of God does not sin,” he leaves no room for options. The truth of this statement is not dependent on what one does, but what one is. The Christian is a born one of God and therefore he does not practice sin. “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9). John says that if one is born of God then it cannot be possible that he continue to live a life in the practice of sin. He does not say that certain requirements must first be met. He does not say that the born one of God will not practice sin unless he refuses to “yield” to, or “walk in the Spirit,” or neglects the reading and hearing of the Word. Nor does John say that this is true unless one refuses the lordship of Christ and does not follow after Him as His disciple. However, all these means must be appropriated for this statement of John’s to be true. So then, we would find that it is the Seed that so effectually works in the heart of the believer that these means will indeed be appropriated, thus being the cause of the born one of God’s obedience. It is by grace. The Word of God is the means used by the Spirit, and the Word being mixed with faith, being living and powerful, has such an effect on the believer that obedience to the Word becomes his way of life. It is the Christian life. If the Word of God lacks such power in the heart, and such a heart is able to blatantly disregard the exhortations of the Word, it is certain that the Seed does not remain in that heart. God says in Ezekiel 36:26-27, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” I will cause you to hunger and thirst for My Word, I will cause you to take up all the appropriate means whereby the practice of righteousness is realized. Most certainly this statement in 1 John 3:9 can only be true of one who walks in the Spirit, abiding in Christ and His Word as His disciple, and just as certainly it is a statement that is true of every believer without exception, for John does not say, “some who are born of God” but rather “he who is born of God.” This is the regeneration of the new covenant that results in progressivesanctification.

God says in Deut. 30:6 “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul that you may live…and you will again obey the voice of the Lord and do all His commandments which I command you today”.

This circumcision of the heart by which we love God, obey His voice and do all His commandments, is the grace we find in the New Testament. We find in Phil. 3:3, “For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit” and in Rom. 2:29, “But he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter,” and in Col. 2:11, “In Him you were circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.” To be circumcised in heart is to be born of the Spirit. What is the result of this circumcision? Love for God and obedience to His word. If this circumcision is by grace, so then is obedience. If the uncircumcised in heart are not saved, then neither are those who do not love the Lord and obey His voice in the keeping of His commandments.

You stated that “This is what writers have called, ‘the end of self’, ‘brokenness’, I called it ‘hitting rock bottom.’” I believe the Scriptures call it salvation. When the Spirit convicts a man of his sin he hits rock bottom, and in his brokenness he cries out to God in desperation, “beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner! (Luke 18:13). He doesn’t simply repeat the “sinner’s prayer” but cries out in agony over his sinful condition seeking to be restored to a right relationship to God and to be set free from his slavery to sin.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin… So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34-37).

“But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin,[past tense] you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness” (Rom. 6:17-1. 8).

Paul says we were slaves to sin but we are now slaves of righteousness. Not because of anything that we have done by our efforts, not by yielding or surrendering, not by works, but rather by something done to us and in us by the power of grace. Titus 3:3-7 sums it up perfectly, For we also once were” [past tense] foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” In other words we once lived a sinful way of life but because of the gracious work of the Spirit in our hearts we walk in this way no longer. Do we still struggle with sin? Yes. Do we walk in sin? No. According to Scripture it is no longer that which characterizes our lives. It is not because of a so-called “second blessing,” “a Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” or “a submitting to His Lordship sometime down the road” but it is the narrow way of the relatively few, the Christian life, as opposed to the broad way of the many that leads to destruction (Matt. 7:13-14) We never read in Scripture of two kinds of Christians (although we will find Christians at varying stages of its maturity) but we read often of those who “profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him” (Titus 1:16, 1 John 2:4, Matt. 7:21-27, Matt. 15:8, Gal. 5:19, Gal. 6:7, 1 Cor. 6:9-10, ) It seems to me that those who say otherwise are “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power” (2 Tim. 3:5)

What are your views with regards to Rewards in heaven being in proportion to how we lived our lives here on Earth. Will there be hierarchy in heaven in terms of those who lived as ‘good, obedient’ Christians over those who just ‘coasted’ along in life and went to heaven anyway?

regards

Ajit